Recovering cube faces from tiles

Q&A about the latest versions
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tksharpless
Posts: 88
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:24 pm

I doubt I am the only one who sometimes needs to recover a panorama from a multiresolution tile set.

With krpano this is not so hard. Its make_tiles function can also do the reverse. You do have to figure out the original face size yourself, and process each face with a separate command line. P2VR uses basically the same tiling scheme as krpano, so it can also be 'undone' with make_tiles, after a bit of preparation.

P2VR tiles sit in a deep stack of directories, despite the fact that the file names clearly identify their places in the tiled cube. Well, that's not so bad, just drag all the files for the highest resolution level into one directory. Then you have to use a utility like Bulk Rename to insert the characters h and v into the file names in the places where krpano expects them. Then you can combine them into a cube face with a krpano command line. Finally use either krpano or P2VR to make an equirectangular from the cube faces.

But what about the P2VR loyalists, who rely on it to make everything easy and automatic, and don't use krpano? Don't they deserve a one-click "UnTile" function? How about it, Thomas?

[BTW the lower right tile is really not oversize, Windows is just showing it that way]
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tksharpless
Posts: 88
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:24 pm

Correction: P2VR tile file names have the same format as krpano ones, no need to rename.
tksharpless
Posts: 88
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:24 pm

It has come to my attention that the current scheme for storing multiresolution tiles is even more obfuscated than before, supposedly to make it harder for bad guys to steal a panorama off the web. This is a false hope. There is no practical way prevent reconstructing a cube from tiles, for the simple reason that the player must do that. If it were very hard, then the player would not be usable.

That aside, an 'un-tile' function would be a valuable addition to P2VR. If you wanted to try to stop it being used by casual evildoers, you could e.g. embed a code in each generated pano that would prevent P2VR un-tiling it if it was not created by the registered user. But I would not bother.
imme
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu Oct 22, 2015 5:05 pm

I am having same issue. My 4.74 gigapixel panorama psb was destroyed during recent ransomware attack. Is there anyway of recovering it from tiles?? Need help..
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360Texas
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That brings up a really great question.. do you now have in place an archiving policy plan for future issues. (read backup file storage OFF COMPUTER and SERVER say on a stand alone Flash or external hard drive ) ?
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imme
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu Oct 22, 2015 5:05 pm

Yes, I have a backup plan and I copy it on multiple devices in different locations. But in this case I forgot to backup final version of equirect file.

So coming back to my query :) . How can reassemble equirect from tiles?
Howard
Posts: 209
Joined: Wed Jun 03, 2009 5:58 am

imme
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu Oct 22, 2015 5:05 pm

howard thanks but i have a 4 gigapixel equirect case here. So need automation of this process.
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